Where is Wall Street accountability?

The law applies to everyone. Wall Street protesters should be held accountable if they engage in illegal activity — and so should Wall Street banks. There is no excuse for protesters to violate public safety laws — and no excuse for powerful financial institutions to defraud their customers or investors.

Yet for all the talk about accountability, there has been little action when it comes to holding large financial institutions accountable for breaking the law.

Story Continued Below

Look at the latest foreclosure fraud scandals. For more than a year, one story after another has come to light exposing how some of America’s largest financial institutions broke the law. In some cases, their blatantly illegal behavior in the foreclosure process pushed families out of their homes. In some others, families gave up and moved away under the threat of foreclosure.

The revelations about robosigning — in which mortgage servicers falsified legal documents to foreclose on homes faster and more cheaply — were followed by stories about illegal home foreclosures against military personnel serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, cases of mistaken-identity foreclosures, cases of foreclosures caused by bad record keeping and on and on.

Credit unions and most small banks followed the law. But the biggest mortgage lenders and servicers swamped the system with bad practices.

As stories of illegal behavior in Massachusetts and across the country tumbled out, Wall Street plotted its strategy. Instead of owning up, huge financial services companies took a different approach: They set new spending records hiring an army of lobbyists to shift attention away from their wrongdoing.

The big banks and their allies followed a now-familiar game plan: Launch an offensive against anyone trying to enforce the law with rigor; work overtime to block serious investigation of illegal activity; and persuade the government to accept a slap-on-the-wrist settlement to absolve their violations of the law.

But there has been some pushback recently. On Nov. 28, a federal judge rejected a government settlement with Citibank over accusations that it misled investors in the run-up to the financial crisis. Why? The judge said there hadn’t been enough investigation.

Just last week, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley filed a lawsuit against the five largest mortgage servicers, bringing to a halt here in Massachusetts the stalling tactics that banks have used for more than a year as they dodged responsibility for foreclosure practices.

Does this mean the tide is turning toward real accountability — a full and fair investigation of the biggest financial institutions? A test case now lies before Congress.